Survey: XP Users Keeping an Open Mind about Windows 7

Perception is a funny thing. If you listen to Microsoft, Vista, despite its acknowledged shortcomings, has been a success story and the company has the sales numbers to prove it. But talk to the end users and you'll hear a very different opinion. The negative perception towards Vista remains so strong that thousands of XP users have continued to make do with a nearly decade old OS.

The good news for Microsoft is that those same users don't hold the same disdain for Windows 7 as they do for Vista, according to a survey conducted by PC World and Technologizer.com. The survey pinged nearly 5,000 Windows XP users to find out how they feel about their current OS, why they haven't moved to Vista, and what their thoughts are regarding Windows 7.

Over 25 percent of the respondents said they continue to use XP because Vista doesn't justify an upgrade, and out of those who have used Vista, over half indicated somewhat negative or very negative feelings towards it. Of those who have never touched Vista, about 80 percent said they have somewhat negative or very negative feelings towards the OS.

Those opinions haven't soured the perception of Windows 7. Out of those who have had a chance to play with a beta or RC of the upcoming OS, over 65 percent said they felt very positive or somewhat positive with their experience, and only about 10 percent reported feeling negative.

Comments

I frequently have to reinstall it on older machines and the rigamarole of having to partition and repartition modern hard drives to deal with the limits of XPSP1, with cheezy drive bios overlays and repartitioning after the install, I say meh. I got Vista when it first came out on a cheep Toshiba laptop and it never crapped out on me once. I put it on my new home desktop in teh 64 bit flavah and it likewise hasn't given me a lick of trouble. Itunes? Crap. Office 2007? Lobotomy in a box with a side of the Sherm. Vista? Like buttah. 7? holding off on the htpc until it is released. Win98SE and Ubuntu/easypeasy? Very nice as well. Apple Mac OS flavors? Baby poop on moldy toast.

I have been using Vista since day 1 on 6 different machines varying from a fossil of a laptop, budget desktop, brand new laptop (x2) to custom built desktop (x2). I have NEVER.....EVER got even ONE single BSOD!! Well, I lie. One of my custom desktops had a RAM slot fry out and it caused me constant BSODs until I changed out mobos.

I think all those people with BSODs are just poorly setup and configured computers, spyware/bloatware filled systems & uneducated computer users.

Don't get me wrong, XP is awesome...and Win7 is a vast improvement, but this is just what I have seen. What solidifies my theory is everytime I get handed someones "broke" computer to fix...miracle of miracles, no more BSODs or problems when they get it back.

Both our laptop and desktop came with Vista preinstalled, the XPS laptop with home premium and the emachines desktop with home basic, and they were both crashing right outa the box. I also built my previous desktop as well as fix computers in my spare time, so I am hardly an "uneducated computer user."

Well you just explained it right there... an XPS & and Emachine! You should know better. Dell makes crap and emachine...don't they still GIVE those away?? What's your 3rd crashing computer...a Blue Hippo???

Actually since I installed Windows 7RC they don't crash at all and as for the XPS it kick @ss. So...wrong again. As for the emachines desktop it's primarily used for email and web browsing. Not alot of horsepower required for that and at 299.00 you can hardly built one for that.

My wife and I both have a Dell Inspiron 2200 laptops running Windows XP Pro. It's good. We don't plan to ungrade them. There's No Need. We also have a Dell XPS M1530 laptop that came with Windows Vista Home Premium and a emachines EL1200-07W desktop that came with Windows Vista Home Basic. (The laptop is used for gaming and movies and the desktop is used for email and web-browsing.) Both versions of Vista are kept updated and are buggy as hell. Vista will blue screen if left idle too long. (Sometimes after only minutes.) Vista also has a problem with VolumeControlVista.exe crashing constantly. (Ande I do mean CONSTANTLY.) I installed Windows 7RC on the XPS as soon as I heard of Its availabilty. DAMN!! Not one blue screen. Not one crash. Games and software that wouldn't run under Vista are fine and dandy under Win7. Would I buy it? I preordered two copies of Windows 7 Home on day 1. 'Bout all I need to know is does itunes work under Windows 7 yet so I can put the RC on the emachines and leave Vista behind now.

We've been using Windows XP since day one and have been reluctant to move on to Vista as it just didn't offer enough of a performance change to begin with...Yet with SP1 serving up many missing drivers and OEM support steadily growing we decided to go ahead and run a few Vista Enterprise & Ultimate systems and have been quite pleased with the results.

That being said, we've been testing Windows 7 (beta & RC1) from day one...and frankly, I'm impressed with what we've seen so far. We've run Win7 on desktops and laptops from PIII's to Pent D and found a surprising INCREASE in performance while cpu cycles seems to be winding down, causing cooler more efficient systems. So we may in fact upgrade OS's in the near future just to save from having to replace aging equipment any sooner than we have too. (Economics rule no matter what).

Bottom line...if the final release of Windows 7 is at least as good as what we've been testing, we'll be open to consider it as a viable replacement for all the workstations in this company.

"Of those who have never touched Vista, about 80 percent said they have
somewhat negative or very negative feelings towards the OS."

I absolutely HATE that. Do you know how many people I've heard over the last couples years say something like "I want to buy a new computer but they all have that new Vista on them. I've heard that sucks."

I've never seen an OS or any software for that matter get such bad word of mouth from people who have never even used it! For every dumbass that says "I heard Vista sucks" there's another dumbass who hears that and repeats it to yet another dumbass.

First, if you owned a company, would you ever say anything negative about it? Of course not. So M$ is not going to say, "Yea, Vista sucks, what a mistake". They have to tout it. The truth lies in the end user. The fact is the end user thinks and knows Vista sucks in comparism to XP. I think those who are using XP will continue for awhile. Migration will be mostly through new systems and us geeks. John Q. Average will be using XP until he needs a new computer.

MICROSOFT is a greedy company. That is why they get the dollar sign after the M. If you do not agree then either you work for them or you are very naive. I'm leaving it at that cause this is only straying away from the topic which you caused us to do.

There's no such thing as a greedy company, since they all exist to make as much money as possible. If you don't believe that, you're the one who's naive. I believe that we both have the same view, it's just a matter of whether you want to act like an adult or if you want to replace S's with dollar signs like some 13 year old kid.

Yes, I agree that companies are in business to make money, especially for the shareholders. However, one has to ask, at what price? How many times has a drug company been forced to pull a drug from the market because it caused injury or death? They rushed the product to market knowing this information. Look what has been happening in the financial sector with greed and corruption among the trading companies. Back to MICROSOFT. They rush their operating systems out the door well aware of all the problems. Their thinking is "well lets collect the money now and we can just throw some service packs out there". Do you think that is good business practice. How would you like to buy a car that the mfg knew had loads of "bugs" but still sent it out to market with the hopes of fixing it later for you? Let's face it, MICROSOFT didn't get a bad reputation for nothing. Unfortunately, they are the only game in town (I know theres Linux, Mac, etc) but for the most part it's windows or nothing. I use their products and actually like their products. I don't like the way they conduct business.

PS

I own a small business with 4 employees. My goal is to make money, but not if its going to piss off my customers because of shoddy business practices.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but in my opinion, Windows Vista dramatically increased in performance and use after SP2 was released. There were a lot of issues that plagued this OS in the beginning and because of that, Vista will forever be known as the bad child from Microsoft. In reality, now-a-days its a fully functional and great OS. Everyone has just moved on, though.

I'm sorry, but I have 7 with XP virtualization. These people need to move on to newer tech, I mean yeah XP IS awesome but it is old. For comparison sake it is like trading in a nice perfect working order 1996 Vette for a 2010 Vette. The souls are the same but higher tech. Time to move on....And that goes for business's too.